There are tons of resources available on how to access data from a .net application. How is it that this is still really difficult to get right? The myriad of options and requirements often makes it difficult to map the two extremes effectively – to choose the right option for a given requirement. I will discuss some practical approaches to accessing data with ADO.net that focus on fast and effective ways to get up and running without sacrificing flexibility and maintainability. I will include discussions on DAL-BLL generators, data object verses data sets, usage scenarios, presentation integration, and if time permits, how to ‘Linq’ it all together.

If you haven’t done so already, please RSVP and let us know you are coming on the forum here.

The local niche game store BT Games has put up pre-order pricing for the Nintendo Wii console that is supposedly being launched at rAge this year and its got some Nintendo fans a little upset. James Francis from NAG magazine has the following to say in his blog post:

To compare the prices fairly I checked the Amazon UK site as South Africa typically is grouped under Europe for things such as consoles. The Ninetendo Wii console bundled with Wii Sports retails online for £179.99 (roughly R 2600) and the Xbox 360 Core console is listed at the same price. So the South African pre-order price is R300 more than the UK whereas the current Xbox 360 Core console is only R100 more expensive in South Africa. Not such a huge difference but this is supposed to be pre-order pricing so I would expect it to be cheaper.

So will you be buying a Nintendo Wii instead of an Xbox 360? You can join in the discussion on the pricing over at the NAG forum here.

I recently got invited to the Motherland Language Project group on Facebook and after much procrastination decided to take a look see what its all about. Turns out its a bunch of South Africans that are trying to teach a million South Africans to speak Zulu in 8 weeks through twice weekly videos released on the Internet. Motherland Isiko TV (MiTV) is running the project and it looks like a very cool idea.

Growing up in KwaZulu-Natal I was fortunate to learn to speak Zulu in school, but unfortunately it wasn’t a subject choice for me. I wish I had taken more time to get to know the language better, maybe one day I could be as fluent in Zulu as I am in C# and Delphi.

So go sign-up, tell your friends about it and become one of the million true South Africans that learns to communicate in a at least one African language.

For the last few years I’ve experimented with various blogging sites. I started off with my very first blog hosted by Blogger, but I wasn’t too impressed by it. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon the local dotnet.org.za community site run by Armand du Plessis but I found my home there and have been there ever since. I’ve tried to keep my posts relating to .NET however there is more to life than software development and architecture.

Last month I decided to get with the program and register yet another domain for a dedicated personal blog. And with that my CraigN.NET blog was born. A general blog with commentary about my life, my interests and everything that I find interesting. In terms of content I intend to blog at least once a week on various topics including .NET and Xbox 360 gaming. You can generally expect to read my opinions, and believe me I have enough of them, as well and the occasional bit of technology and product news.